List Closing

Folks -
Lately this list has become nothing but a spam magnet. To give you some
perspective, we've gotten 111 spams (and/or email viruses) since
yesterday afternoon. Compared with the volume of legitimate email
traffic on this list (1 or 2 a week), it's just not worth maintaining
the list.
Fear not, though, because we'll be creating a brand new list in the next
couple of days. You should receive a "welcome" announcement giving
information on how to subscribe to, unsubscribe from, and send messages
to the new list shortly thereafter.
We'll be taking the necessary precautions to prevent the new list
becoming victim to spam as well.
Thanks for your attention,
Niel
--
--
Niel Bornstein +1 404 784 0696 niel@...
To receive occasional updates about what I'm doing, subscribe to my
list - http://bornstein.atlanta.ga.us/mailman/listinfo/diaryreaders
_______________________________________________
Bonobos maillist - Bonobos@...http://monkeyfist.com/mailman/listinfo/bonobos

MIT Open Courseware

Folks -
AS you may know, MIT has released its OpenCourseWare
<http://ocw.mit.edu/> to the public. OCW is basically a repository of
MIT's syllabuses, lecture notes, readings, schedules, etc for bunches of
their courses. It is *not* distance learning or pre-packaged classes
that you can take.
That shouldn't stop us from trying.
I propose to try and "take" some MIT courses, using the OCW they have
provided. Since education often benefits from other students, I'd like
to see if any of you would like to take a course with me.
As an offshoot of this, we could set up a web site with links to
readings, resources, discussion boards, etc for any of the courses we
take, and, eventually, allow other groups to use the facilities we
develop to "take" other courses.
Here are the classes that particularly interest me:
11.943J Urban Transportation, Land Use, and the Environment Spring 2002
17.01J Justice Fall 2002
17.30J Fundamentals of Public Policy Fall 2002
17.471 American National Security Policy Fall 2002
21A.453 Anthropology of the Middle East, Spring 2004
21F.034 Media, Education, and the Marketplace Fall 2001
21H.223 War & American Society Fall 2002
21H.418 Technologies of Word 1450-2000 Fall 2002

anniversary of March on Washington

Looking back on perhaps the most important nonviolent mass action in
American history, the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King Jr,
it's interesting to hear some viewpoints on how things were then and how
they are today:
Pastor emeritus of Holman United Methodist Church, James Lawson was a
longtime associate of Martin Luther King Jr. Though involved in the
planning of the 1963 march, he did not attend it, having given his
bus seat to a student. He said today: "The entire march was under
pressure from the Kennedy administration. John Lewis changed his
speech after pressure from the executive committee composed of the
big civil rights groups. The Kennedys didn't like mass actions. When
they realized they couldn't prevent the march, they tried to mold it,
to make it more palatable to white people. I don't think they
realized that the nation was ready to take on segregation; the
churches were ready, except for Southern Baptists like Jerry
Falwell. The march was actually about jobs and freedom as well as
civil rights; something that is overlooked. We still have not dealt
with issues at a systemic level...."
James H. Cone, author of "Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a
Nightmare," Cone is distinguished professor of theology at the Union
Theological Seminary. He said today: "King's great speech has been
distorted. America made his dream speech an optimistic symbol about
itself. Americans can do that because they forget about the role of
Malcolm X, who said 'While King was having a dream, the rest of us
Negroes are having a nightmare.' In time, King would echo those
words, saying 'They have turned my dream into a nightmare.' Now, many
rightwingers love to quote King's speech -- pretending we have
achieved equality while half of the 2 million people in jail today

Re: Camejo-Huffington deal? (Kendall Clark)

Seems like this deal has been in the works for a while. It looked much
better when Bustamante entered the race providing people with a
Democratic Party alternative.
Anyway, this is what i wrote about the elections last week....
http://www.anarchogeek.com/archives/000167.html#000167
-evan
On Wednesday, August 13, 2003, at 02:00 PM,
bonobos-request@... wrote:
> Los Angeles Times - August 13, 2003
>
> Camejo, Huffington Form Unorthodox Alliance
> By Lee Romney, Times Staff Writer
>
> SAN FRANCISCO - Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo
> announced
> Tuesday that he and nonpartisan Arianna Huffington will jointly
> campaign for
> issues in the coming months, then decide together near the end of the
> race
> which candidate is better prepared to sprint to the finish line.
>
> Camejo made the announcement of the unorthodox partnership - which
> Huffington's campaign confirmed is in the planning stages - as consumer
> advocate Ralph Nader sat by Camejo's side to endorse him in the race.
>

French women and domestic violence

Thursday, Aug 14, 2003
Feminism champion falls victim to domestic violence
PARIS AUG. 13. The death of actress Marie Trintignant after a heated row
with her rock star lover has unleashed an outcry over domestic violence in
France  where one in 10 women is beaten at home.
As an autopsy revealed that Trintignant, a classic beauty who had graced
French movies since childhood, died from blows to the face, a study
resurfaced showing that her death is not that extraordinary.
Every five days a woman is beaten to death by her partner, and
wife-battering in France is just as prevalent among the well-heeled as among
the underprivileged, according to the Government-commissioned study which
was published originally in June 2002.
"Trintignant's death has shaken public opinion and smashed stereotypes about
domestic violence.
"Even independent, assertive women can be victims," said Marie-Dominique de
Suremain, head of the National Federation for Women's Solidarity.
"There are 1.5 million women in France who are abused  physically, sexually
or psychologically  by husbands or partners. That implies there are 1.5
million men out there behind this violence, and you wouldn't know to look at
them." The federation, which groups 54 associations, struggles to cope with
some 15,000 calls each year from battered women.
Recently, some 200 supporters, wearing white ribbons as a sign of

Camejo-Huffington deal?

Los Angeles Times - August 13, 2003
Camejo, Huffington Form Unorthodox Alliance
By Lee Romney, Times Staff Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo announced
Tuesday that he and nonpartisan Arianna Huffington will jointly campaign for
issues in the coming months, then decide together near the end of the race
which candidate is better prepared to sprint to the finish line.
Camejo made the announcement of the unorthodox partnership - which
Huffington's campaign confirmed is in the planning stages - as consumer
advocate Ralph Nader sat by Camejo's side to endorse him in the race.
Nader - widely criticized by Democrats as a spoiler for drawing liberal
votes away from former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential
election - lauded Camejo's analysis of the state's budget mess, saying it
was one that "voters will not hear from any other candidate, except for
Arianna Huffington."
Then, in keeping with the burlesque and unpredictable atmosphere of the
state's first gubernatorial recall, Nader was slammed in the face with a pie
as the news conference wound to a close.
While Camejo had urged a civil campaign against his foes, the
finger-pointing wasn't far behind.
As Nader, 67, was ushered into a back room at the Green Party's
headquarters to clean the pie filling from his face, Camejo responded
angrily to reporters' questions about the incident.

"Nickel and Dimed" and UNC

[Barbara Ehrenreich is national treasure! If you haven't read this book
yet, I urge you to do so as soon as possible. --Kendall]
By Barbara Ehrenreich, The Progressive
August 4, 2003
When I was in Scandinavia last spring promoting "Nickel and Dimed,"
interviewers kept asking me to tell them about the "debate" my book had
provoked in the United States. I had to confess that it had provoked no
debate at all, at least none that I had heard of. In fact, when my book
was adopted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a
reading for all incoming students in 2003, the administration expressed
its conviction that it was a "relatively tame selection," at least
compared to last year's choice  a collection of readings from the
Koran. I was beginning to envy Michael Moore, whose publisher had cleverly
boosted sales by attempting to suppress his book "Stupid White Men" in the
wake of 9/11.
Then, early in July, I got a phone call from Matt Tepper, president of the
student body at UNC-CH, inquiring as to what I thought would be a useful
way to direct the incoming students' discussions of "Nickel and Dimed." I
suggested that the students ought to apply the book's concerns to their
own campus, where workers have been trying to organize against heavy
administrative opposition. I sat back to wait for new students to arrive
at the end of the summer so the controversy could begin.
Within about a week  while the incoming first-year students were still
working on their tans  a controversy arrived all right. It just wasn't
the one I was hoping for.

Outing oneself as an atheist...

[This appeared on the New York Times op-ed page.]
July 12, 2003
The Bright Stuff
By DANIEL C. DENNETT
The time has come for us brights to come out of the closet. What is a
bright? A bright is a person with a naturalist as opposed to a
supernaturalist world view. We brights don't believe in ghosts or elves or
the Easter Bunny -- or God. We disagree about many things, and hold a
variety of views about morality, politics and the meaning of life, but we
share a disbelief in black magic -- and life after death.
The term "bright" is a recent coinage by two brights in Sacramento,
Calif., who thought our social group -- which has a history stretching
back to the Enlightenment, if not before -- could stand an image-buffing
and that a fresh name might help. Don't confuse the noun with the
adjective: "I'm a bright" is not a boast but a proud avowal of an
inquisitive world view.
You may well be a bright. If not, you certainly deal with brights
daily. That's because we are all around you: we're doctors, nurses, police
officers, schoolteachers, crossing guards and men and women serving in the
military. We are your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters. Our
colleges and universities teem with brights. Among scientists, we are a
commanding majority. Wanting to preserve and transmit a great culture, we
even teach Sunday school and Hebrew classes. Many of the nation's clergy
members are closet brights, I suspect. We are, in fact, the moral backbone
of the nation: brights take their civic duties seriously precisely because
they don't trust God to save humanity from its follies.

dissertation a security threat?

Dissertation Could Be Security Threat
Student's Maps Illustrate Concerns About Public Information
By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 8, 2003; Page A01
Sean Gorman's professor called his dissertation "tedious and unimportant."
Gorman didn't talk about it when he went on dates because "it was so
boring they'd start staring up at the ceiling." But since the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks, Gorman's work has become so compelling that companies want
to seize it, government officials want to suppress it, and al Qaeda
operatives -- if they could get their hands on it -- would find a
terrorist treasure map.
Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee,
this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business
and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the
fiber-optic network that connects them.
He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines
running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke
point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between
Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a
hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links,
trying to answer the question: "If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I
want to attack?" In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.
For this, Gorman has become part of an expanding field of researchers
whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security reasons. His

new military force?

US proposes world peacekeeping force
Rumsfeld floats proposal to end Bush doctrine of unilateralism
David Teather in New York
Saturday June 28, 2003
The Guardian
The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is discussing the idea of an
international peacekeeping force which could be dispatched to maintain
order in the world's trouble spots.
The idea is an apparent sharp reversal of the Bush administration's
staunchly unilateralist stance. It also runs counter to the
administration's strong opposition, on taking office, to tying up troops
in peacekeeping roles.
But with American forces thinly spread across the globe and the US
military facing insurgency and accusations of mishandling the situation in
post-war Iraq, the White House is coming under increasing political
pressure to find a different means of policing unstable nations.
Earlier this week, the UK's ambassador to the UN, Sir Jeremy Greenstock,
urged the US to spearhead a peacekeeping force for Liberia, which is being
torn apart by a civil war.
At a dinner in Washington last week, Mr Rumsfeld told defence industry
leaders: "I am interested in the idea of our leading, or contributing to
in some way, a cadre of people in the world who would like to participate
in peacekeeping or peacemaking.

CHELSEA AND HER DAD

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10 2001>> Chelsea joins the hecklers at rally>> BY GLEN OWEN, EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT>> CHELSEA CLINTON was among a group of American students which disrupted an> anti-war meeting in Oxford, it was revealed last night.> Frustrated at anti-American feeling, the daughter of the former President> arrived at the 500-strong meeting in Oxford Town Hall with a dozen friends> who heckled speakers.>> Miss Clinton, a postgraduate student in international relations at> University College, Oxford, her father's alma mater, has confessed that she> is feeling isolated and threatened by the mood she has detected at the> university. She found it difficult encountering "anti-American feeling" from> peace demonstrators.

JUST WANT TO correct your statement. Billy Boy did not graduate
from the College. He raped a gal the first period he was there, and
the Brits threw him out.

"President Bill Clinton is facing a fresh sex scandal today over claims that he raped a 19-year-old girl while he was a student at Oxford in the Sixties. The allegation - together with claims that he sexually assaulted another student while at Yale - appear on a Washington website, Capitol Hill Blue
(http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/redirect?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.capitolhillblue.com). It is claimed the future president met the 19 year old in an Oxford pub when he was a Rhodes Scholar in 1969. A retired State Department official is quoted by the website confirming that the rape took place and saying: "There is no doubt in my mind that this woman suffered severe emotional trauma. ( For this he was told he was no longer welcome in England, and he went to Russia, where he helped organize protests against the U.S. for the war.)
"But we were under tremendous pressure to avoid the embarrassment of having a Rhodes Scholar charged with rape. I filed a report to my superiors and that was the last I heard of it."
He added that he was under the impression that while at Oxford "Clinton was more interested in drinking, drugs and sex than studies." Capitol Hill Blue says the alleged victim - who is now married and lives near London - hired a lawyer and changed her phone number after saying she would not go public with further details. Before moving to the London area she is believed to have lived in Europe for a number of years, most recently in Germany.
Women students who were at Oxford at the same time as Clinton have accused him of "boorish behaviour", claiming he would press himself up against them and frequently suggest they should be honoured to have sex with him.
The Yale University allegations centre on an incident in 1972 - where Clinton had returned from Oxford to study. A 22-year-old woman student complained to campus police she had been sexually assaulted by him. The web-site claims police confirmed the report. Like the woman in England, the Yale victim was tracked down, but she too refused to give her married name or to discuss the allegations.